Technical innovations, standardization and regional comparison - a case study in mobile communications

This paper studies the relationship between technical innovations and stand ardization, eliciting implications for an optimal role for standardization in the innovation processes, taking mobile communications as an example. An important role of standardization is to synchronize disjointed technical i nnovations into a systemic innovation, which creates a new market. A two-ti ered approach to alleviate negative effects of standardization on technical innovations is discussed, to specify only the interface specifications bet ween sub-systems and to define successive generations of standards. Finally , a regional comparison is made among Europe, Japan and USA on the standard ization processes of mobile systems and their ensuing results. (C) 2000 Els evier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.